Comtemporary Media & Practical Skills

Humble Lessons: Experimenting with PS4's SHAREfactory

During my spare time at home, I decided to record gameplay footage off my PS4 and use the editing software 'SHAREfactory' to edit the video's I produced.

Using this video editing software helped me to gain a brief understanding of what it takes to edit. I am not a very good editor by the way, but I would like to hone my skills in editing to become even better.

However in this software I earned the importance of cutting down time, and learning how to trim out important parts of the video very carefully. I also learned how to use special effects and transitions when it's appropriate.

By learning some of the features in SHAREfactory it has allowed me to think deeper about what special effects and transitions can I add when I start making the music video. This software has made me question myself about how can I be more creative in my thinking, and how can my creavity and imagination impact on making the real music video that I will soon produce.

Rising To A New Challenge... :Learning With Sony Vegas Pro 13 (Update 28/10/14)

So I decided to download a copy Sony Vegas Pro 13. I want to get to grips with it because its very powerful in the features and effects it has to offer for the user. Instead of using SHAREfactory to edit my gameplay video's, I thought it will be a good idea to expand my knowledge even further  and enhance my editing skills to be better. Am going to make a montage of FIFA 15 online goals which involved a classmate of mine in my media class where we played together in the game.

Here's a quick snapshot of my progress editing the videos in Sony Vegas Pro 13:

The Final Edit:

After a couple of hours learning Sony Vegas Pro 13 I finally managed to finish off the montage video. Here is a picture of the finished editing in Vegas Pro

I managed to upload the finished montage on YouTube. The video is fully rendered at 1080p 60 frames per second and there is no interlacing throughout the video. Here's the video below:

 Review of The Montage: 

This video links to the theorists important people in the media history, Dziga Vertov and

Einstein. These two theorists discovered the potentials of making a video montage and also learned the importance of how to cut down time to get everything they wished to show in a film in a matter of a few minutes. This includes fast snippets of short video footages, usually to tell a story of progress. A montage is a great editing technique to give the target audience a break and help speed up the process of parts audience don't like to see very often.

In this case, my video montage of FIFA 15 was to show the goals scored against online players done alongside another media student who played with me. Within the first 10-15 seconds of the video, I show little snippets of trying to beat the opposition's defence with skill moves, which represents the idea of the progress of how we try to score goals. After the snippets of skill moves are shown, the rest of the video tells the story of the progress of scoring goals with good team play. When a goal is scored I used transitions (mainly cross fade) to move onto the next scene quickly to show continuity of the video.

Because I've been able to show montage through practicing it with a video game, am considering my music video to have a short 1-2 min montage telling a story of progress of making money, then showing the good/bad sides of money. This will be beneficial to the music video because it will consist of transitions and special effects used, such as slow motion etc. Our music video is based on Stan Smith Money on my mind.

My Contemporary Media (Video Games):

This is my little spider diagram that I did in my own time where I researched regulation in video games. This is an area in my media studies which I genuinely love and enjoy, so researching this area of the media was really fun. I managed to explore a wide range of information regarding audiences, the history, the economical side, and most importantly the differences of physical and digital video games and how it can have an impact on the audience in terms of age ratings.

Video Game Regulator: PEGI

 

PEGI stands for 'Pan European Game Information' and they are a company that regulate the age ratings for video games that are released. PEGI age ratings are put on video games to show the age requirement for a game and most importantly, to show the parent/carer and see if they should buy the game for their child to play or not. 

The parent for instance, can turn to the back of the video game case to see specifically what the game has inside of it. This gives the parent a broad idea of what is expected in the video game if bought. For example, an 18 rated game will have bad language, sex, violence, drugs, and discrimination. In the modern world today, most parents dont really take age ratings into consideration and just buy the game for their child. But there are some parents that are concerned about the content in games and take age ratings seriously, therefore they are unlikely to buy the video game. The regulation of PEGI age ratings say that no one under age of any age rating (3,7,12,16,18) must not be sold to them if they dont meet the age requirements.

Perfecting and Practising With Slow/Fast Motion (Sony Vegas Pro 13) : Update (19/12/14)

So i got a little bit more advanced with Sony Vegas Pro and felt more confident in my ability to be more creative. So i decided to make a Battlefield 4 Montage that focuses mainly on slow and fast motion effects. I wanted to see how well I can use slow/fast motion effectivetely at the right moments. Here is the video of the montage:

My Comtemporary Media: (Films)

This is my little mindmap I made about film regulation in the media. This mindmap outlines breifly of the pros and cons of the film regulation in the media.
I chose film regulation because video games and film regulation both link together very well, as they are very similar to each other as such.
 

Research and planning

Being an active reader inside the media:

These two sites are the sites I always look at when I feel the need to look at what's going on inside the media. IMDb website helps me greatly because it keeps me updated with the latest films that are upcoming and most importantly reading film reviews. I believe reading film reviews is brilliant, because the reviews outline the pros and cons of the films, which is essential to help me learn and not do mistakes in my case, making a music video.

Music Genres

Pop music is a popular genre that originated from the 1950s. Artists like Elvis Presley was a popular pop artist that used pop to make him shine. Other great artists came along such as Michael Jackson as the king of pop, and Madonna who was described as the queen of pop. Pop is basically a softer side of rock, where there is a mixture of many elements that allow people to listen to it easy when its being played.

R&B music, also known as 'Rhythm & Blues' was developed mainly by African Americans with an urban style that evolved mainly from the jazz and blues. R&B tunes mainly rely on a consistent beat that is always in time and because of this, R&B has encouraged people to dance towards it. Most of R&B lyrics are mainly about every life which involved speaking about drinking, clubbing, sex, and life issues. Popular artists in this current generation that do R&B are Usher, Mariah Carey, Miss Elliot and so on.

Hip hop music was originally originated from America in the 1980's by black American artists. Hip hop involved a lot of rap into the music which allowed people to be creative with words they rhyme together to make the music they make more appealing to there target audience. Hip hop is mainly popular in the youth and early adults as most music videos have the location of an urban setting environment. The urban environment usually consists of graffiti on the walls of the streets which empathize the idea of what the hip hop genre is about.


27/10/14: My thoughts on watching 'The Maze Runner'

During the early days of the half term, my friends and I decided to watch 'The Maze Runner' film at Vue cinema. The genre of the film is a horror/action and its about a load of young/teen people who are forcefully taken into a labatory to get there brains brainwashed. There brains are brainwashed so that they can be tested to see if they can they survive in extreme environments. The scientists are trying to investigate and get a solution to cure a deadly virus that attacks the brain, so this is why they chose certain young people to be brainwashed so that they can do research about the viruses attacks. The environment they live in, is a square of land where on each side of the square land, there are walls that have doors. One of the walls opens up a door that leads to a very big maze, and in that maze, there are nasty big creatures called 'griefers'. The main protagonist of the film, Thomas, is a brave and courageous young boy who manages to find the secret of why everyone around him is here in this unknown land, fights off the griefers, and is the hero of the whole film.

While my friends and I were watching the film for pure enjoyment, I took it a step further to keep my eyes peeled for camera techniques and shots. I noticed throughout this film, that there were a lot of close up and midshots throughout. One shot that I was really interested to see which got me thinking was a shot where the griever came to attack Thomas and from the griever's point of view the camera was moving very close to Thomas's face very quickly. It was a brilliantly worked shot, therefore its made me want to try and practice this shot for my music video we will produce. The film was really good, and I feel that by watching this film, its showed me the importance of learning how to time camera shots effectively, and learning how to switch camera shots/angles carefully.


Andrew Goodwin and Laura Mulvey Theory:



Target Audience and Descriptions:











Focus Group

This is my focus group that i filmed in order to gain more ideas on what teenagers in general think about money and how would they spend it if they had a lot of money to spend. I filmed 20 people when making the focus group but I only picked the best ones that I thought were the best in my opinion. I shortened the amount of people I filmed from 20 to 12 people. I did this so that I can shorten down the time of the video to match the music audio length of time playing in the background.

Most of the responses from the teenagers that I filmed mainly said responses that involved going shopping and buying a lot of stuff for themselves such as clothes and trainers etc. However there were some mature responses from some teens where they would invest the money in either a business and help out friends and family. I did include a person that was over 20+ so that I can see if I would get a much more matured response, and indeed I did.

With this focus group, it has given me more ideas on what I could possibly include in my music video in order to appeal to my teenage target audience.

Conventions of the Pop/R&B Genre:

Here above is the initial conventions of both the Pop and R&B genre that the audience expects to see or wants to see in a music video. We aim to follow these conventions since we want to have a hybrid of the two genre put together in our music video. If we follow these conventions, the music video that we will produce will be successful and the target audience will appeal to it well.

Katy Perry Roar Music Video:


Key conventions in this music video above:

* The use of moderate panning to show part of the location or a character involved.
* Use of transition effects to smootly move onto the next scene.
* Heavy use of close up and mid-shots of Katy Perry.
* The use of dialogue to say the lyrics.
* The use of dialogue that isnt of the lyrics. (Screaming when she sees the tiger)
* The use of special effects.
*Tells the audience a story. How she overcame her fear and became a ruler of the tiger.


Target Audience Research

What makes the Pop genre so popular:
The pop genre is the most popular and is increasingly expanding and gaining popularity at a fast rate. According to research Pop is the genre that has the ability to have millions of dollars/pounds to produce music video to the mainstream audience. The main reason why people listen to Pop music is because the music is generally nice and fun to listen to, to the listener of the song. In most cases is true, and Pop artists like Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, are artists that are able to make their music fun and easy for the target audience to listen to. While pop music lovers tend to be (according to research) hardworking and have a high self-esteem, they do tend to be less creative and more uneasy. Me personally am a Pop lover but in my music video I aim to challenge my creativity when making the music video I want to show to my target audience, so that the codes and conventions I implement in my music video will appeal to them. However, I have also researched that the Pop Genre has this repetitiveness in music video's of the main protagonist of the video being 'cool' and somehow being able to comfort people. Things such as sex appeal of women in the music videos will comfort a man and make him feel happy maybe to escape from his personal problems for a temporary time. This is where the Laura Mulvey theory of the male gaze comes into play with Pop, that men like seeing certain parts of women's body (e.g breasts, legs, bum etc)


What makes the R&B genre so popular:
The R&B genre is another popular genre that is ever increasing in popularity year by year. According to research, the reason why R&B is attractive and popular is because of the singers thoughts and soul into the music they produce. The majority of modern R&B singers make their songs based on real life issues such as heartbreaks, love and social issues in society. Examples of artists who do this are Ashanti, 50 Cent, and Kanye West. The Ashanti video that I analysed in this blog, the video is about Ashanti's problems with finding a loyal man to be with for the rest of her life, but outlines the problems and issues of infidelity trust problems, lying, arguments and fights, and the struggle to keep and fight for a relationship to continue to be stable. All these issues present in Ashanti's 'Foolish' music video appeals to the target audience. This links to the Andrew Goodwin theory where in this case Ashanti's music video 'Foolish' has a direct relationship between the song and the visuals/moving images shown in the video. I believe that this allows the audience to feel a sense of escapism or entertainment (Blumler and Blutz Uses and Gratifications Approach) which can relate to someone's personal problems and therefore feel that they are not alone by themselves. But in my music video I aim to make sure that my music video gives something for my target audience to think about by showing them scenes that will influence their thoughts on the spending of money of the good and bad sides to it. We will do this by using the Hypodermic Syringe Model to use scenes that will directly impact the target audience's mindset as a result.

So the genre of the music video I am planning to make is a hybrid of pop and r&b. My music video is aimed at a young target audience and above (15+) which I believe will be suitable for the audience to view. I am very confident that the music video that I will produce will have an impact on the teenage audience and appeal to them. We will follow the codes and conventions in order to make sure that this music video is successful.


3 Caterogies of Music Videos:




Research Into The Music Industry:






Intertextuality in Music Videos:





 

To further show my understanding of intertextuality i have chosen another music which is 'Taylor Swift Love Story'. What Taylor Swift has done here is a clear example of a love story. She has taken the classical Shakespeare play 'Romeo and Juliet' and implemented it into her music video. She has taken the 'love elements' of the play when Romeo and Juliet were able to see each other everyday, therefore Taylor Swift is able to make her own version of  'Romeo and Juliet'. The only difference to this is that, the man acting in this music video doesnt die and Taylor Swift doesnt follow death also. This will appeal to a young teenage target audience because I believe the acts shown in this video will give both boys and girls a sense that love is sweet when you find the right person. However some people may feel emotional about watching this video because they havent found love yet and will cause that part of the audience to feel 'left out' as a result. For the majority of the target audience, this music video has the ability to make them feel happy, motivated and stay positive throughout their lives. Some of them feel that sense and meaning in the song gives them motivation and encouragement to get through life and all that gets in their way.

Here are some YouTube comments to show evidence of how the audience feels about this song;

Planning of Plot & A brief outline




Moodboard:

This is my moodboard. It is a little mock up of all my ideas that I plan to include in my music video 'money on my mind'. This moodboard will help me to remember important ideas that must be in the music video in order for it flow well and be successful with it.

Storyboarding

In order to plan for our music video, we must have a rough idea of what we want to produce. This is done through storyboarding. Storyboarding gives us the opportunity to visualize and plan the shots and scene we wish to produce for our music video.

Characters Lists




Props Lists:

This is the prop's list for our main protagonist...

Costume Lists:

This the costume list for our main protagonist...

Equipment List:

The equipment we used to film and edit our music video...

Analysis of Digipaks:

Justin Timberlake: Greatest Hits 2002

Katy Perry Digipak

Analysis of Advert Digipaks:


Jessie J:
















Rihanna:

A new modern narrative theory (Dan Harmon) (11/02/2015)

So today I was researching Dan Harmon who is an American writer for films and TV series. He has his special formula for when he is writing for films. He calls this the 'Harmon Model'. The Harmon Model consists of 8 stages...
1. A character who's in his zone of comfort
2. They want something that they like
3. They enter a new world
4. Adapts to the new world
5. Gets what they want
6. Suffers as a result
7. Returns to ordinary
8. Changes as a result

These 8 stages of the Harmon Model appeal to me greatly. I feel using this narrative model will help me build and develop my music video even better. I feel that this narrative model is the advancement of the Vladimir Propp character theory and Todorov theory, and therefore the Harmon Model links both Propp and Todorov theory perfectly together.

The Harmon Model links perfectly to our music video story line and storyboard.


Locations

Deprived Locations we may film at: (Using Google Maps)

Heygate Estate


Due to its urban representation that this estate shows, this estate has been widely used as a filming location. Films like 'Attack the block' and 'Shank' have used this location extensively to film their shots.


Broadwater Farm

This is another good example of a deprived area, Broadwater Farm area also has a lot of pathways that look unpleasant and urban.

Ida Road













Another example of a deprived less pleasant area where we could have potential to film here.






Rich looking locations we may film at: (Using Google Maps)


Oxford Street

One of the most busiest areas in London. This area of London is the best place to portray what our protagonist does with his 'lotto money' as a result of going to many good shops.


Leicester Square

An open space environment which is a brilliant place to express and represent the happiness our protagonist feels in the music video.


Piccadilly Circus

Piccadilly circus has loads of bars and clubs around, which will allow us to represent our protagonist clubbing and chatting up girls.


Representation:



Mis-en-scene:




Shots lists:

So over here is the complete shot's list of every scene that links to the storyboard of our music video

 
 

Production Schedule: