Thank you

To the moderator, my name is Grace Keyte and my canditate number is 9107.



Links to my group members blogs:
Natasha Price - candidate number 9145 - http://natashapricea2.blogspot.co.uk/
Charlotte Millar - candidate number 9040 - http://charleemillar18.blogspot.co.uk

Thank you!

Music Video

 

Digipak

Website

http://gracekeyte.wix.com/website

This is my completed website

Evaluation

Deleted scenes

Polydor record label research

When looking into Ellie Goulding's record labels (shown in my previous post) I found Polydor records and Cherrytree records, I used the Cherrytree records on my digipak just out of preference, but after further research as a group we found that this is Ellie Goulding's main label and here is the research into it.

Polydor records - Media Coursework from Natashacp

Changes to my website

Here is another 'stupeflix' I've made. I love using this website as it is fun and simple to use, from using it I've learnt different and interesting ways of presenting what I want without it being boring. One thing about it I particularly love, is that you can add your own song as it makes it really personal!

Filming

Today during filming we looked at Tasha's facial expressions and body language. In some of the previous clips we filmed towards the start of the course we noticed that she looked a bit stiff and awkward, and that although she is acting, it looked really fake.




We deleted the previous scenes and created these new ones with explain a narrative further. By doing this I learnt how important the main character is for telling the story, because if her full emotions were not being shown the story is confused.

Soundcloud

Today I created a Soundcloud account. I uploaded the song for our video and will use this link on my websiteTo do this I had to convert the Youtube video to MP3 and upload it from my files, this is something I've not done before so it was a new challenge, also I had never used Soundcloud however I have found it interesting and easy to use, it is a good way to have the music but without the video, which is perfect for the website homepage as it is just a preview of what's to offer.

Things we have learnt as a group.....

VOKI of things I have learnt |(the dog) and also which the other members of my group have learnt. These have been used in the evaluation

Digipak Second upload

Changes to digipak

This is the finished digipak

Evaluation research: Facebook and intro of poll

More evaluation research: Poll results

These are the results from the poll, along with some comments that were added by the participants

By doing this I have learnt what the audience like and dislike. This means that I can comment on what went well and what didn't, so I can establish what improvements would be needed if I were to take this course again. This will be useful in the evaluation.

Constructive criticism

As a group we have made a list of what we believe we could improve in our video, and also what we have been advised to improve from feedback.

Storyline needing to be clearer

- Certain settings seem to be random

- Park= NO

- Taylor swift- watch it, similarities

- Hug on road is awkward

- Vaseline edged clips

- Park scenes

- Red dress= NO, does not suit setting

- Always the same hand gestures

- Add another possible spin?

- Not smile during last spin

- Editting and effects

- Re-do some shots to look more realistic

- A lot going on

-Sleep scene is too long

-Relationship dying?

-Shoes with legs would look better

We are making small tweaks to our video and this has helped to prioritize what needs to be done. By doing this I've learnt that not all first ideas are the best ones and that although they may seem good at the time, they need to be practiced and edited to get the full effect, which sometimes isn't the one we were hoping to achieve. 

Evaluation research

In today's lesson we were planning for our evaluation. We looked to start at question 3 which was about audience feedback. Our audience is made up from teenage boys and girls between ages of 14 and 19 so we showed people from our sixth form (ages between 16 to 18) the video and recorded their reactions along with a discussion of questions we asked. The questions were based around "in what ways does the video remind you of other videos", "what do you think are the strengths of the video" and "what do you think are the weaknesses of the video". As we were asking the questions through a conversation we were able to expand and get more depth and reasons behind the answers we received.

Here are some photos from today's research

Here is the video (still unedited) we will use parts of this for our evaluation piece

Website research

Here is a short video of the group looking at other websites for current artists. This was beneficial to us because we looked at the general codes and conventions of these websites, so we knew what the audience would be expecting when creating our own.

Website

http://gracekeyte.wix.com/website

This is the latest version of my website. I am still updating as I'm still learning new techniques. Wix.com is something I'm finding quite difficult to navigate my way around but so far I have learnt how to manipulate text and images, and I have also added a photo gallery.

Going through video

Today we went through the entire video and taking the class feedback into consideration, above is a short clip of us doing this. We noted down all of the clips that need to be re-filmed. (the list may not make much sense but it works for us!)

By doing this we realised that the finished video we first thought was really good had a lot of glitches that need to be fixed. We can now start to film them again and put it all in place together

Pixlr collage for CD background

To create my CD background of the collage images I used a website called www.pixlr.com 

On this you can decide how many images you want to add so I chose a 3x3 and added all of the images from the same shoot.

Here I have them all added, but as some of them were taken with different lighting, with flash or different camera effects....

I edited each photo so they had the same tone and effect and were in regularity.

Things I've learnt using Photoshop

CD

To achieve this I cut out a shape of a CD using the magnetic tool again and pasted it into photoshop on top of my first layer. I have all my images underneath as I had first planned and wanted a plain CD to go on top. The effect I wanted was that if the CD was lifted out of the case, the background would be full of the photos.

I tried using plain white with the purple theme on top, however after playing around with a few colour I decided to just go for a darker colour and use plain white for the writing, this seemed to match more and although I didn't carry on with the house style of the purple colour on this I think it suits the digipak and matches.

Research

As we are using Ellie Goulding as our model artist and applying our artist of Natasha to her songs and information I thought it would be good to do some extra research.

For my inside cover I plan on having the lyrics of the hit single and with that I thought the writer's and producers of the song should be involved so I looked onto the lyrics pages on the internet and found this.

I also wanted to include on my back page the record label Ellie Goulding (Natasha) is attached to. I found out that she is attached to three, so I chose the one I liked the look of best and decided to use this for my artist's back page.

Colour change of digipak

After spending a lot of time working on the digipak with the black and white theme (shown in the spine of this image) I decided that it wasn't working. I thought about each of the components to do with the artist, genre and into the digipak's colours and fonts and changed my mind completely. I thought about how Natasha is an indie-pop artist and that the black and white was too bold and dramatic to suit this. She is a pretty girl with a sweet nature as an artist so I thought these colours would suit better. Flowery and purple just seemed to work best and now I am much happier working with this. This background still shows the main feature of her hair so I think this works very well. I can also use different tones of the purple which is good to create a house style.

In this I have also added in a barcode to the back page to make it into a 'real' album to be sold in shops

Front and back of digipak so far

This is the front and back on my digipak so far... This is a basic idea of what I want it to look like with the contrasting colours black and white. I want Natasha's main feature of her hair to stand out so I want the background to be dark to achieve this.

NME star rating

Looking into other digipaks I realised that it was a common feature to have a 'rating' from a company such as a magazine or newspaper so I decided to use one of the biggest music companies with multi-platform media publications, NME.

I chose to rate it 4 stars as this seemed reasonable and attainable for the new artist!

Photoshop: using the magnetic tool

Digipak

This is my completed digipak

 

 

 

Template ideas

I have been looking at templates on Google to follow and this is one that our teacher has also recommended and that I think looks very promising. This is the one that I have used as a basic layout idea of my digipak.

Digipak ideas

Today I have been thinking of designs for my digipak. I have created some basic drawings as a rough idea for what I want to do, but all of the plans will come together once I have put them onto a template on Photoshop, as I have drawn and written in pencil some of the details are quite faint. By doing this I have looked at common conventions that I can follow from other digipaks. I have a clear idea of what I want to do so now I need to put it into photoshop. I've learnt from this what ideas I want to keep and what ones that I wont use again other than on this paper version.

Photoshoot photos

Digipak photos

Website: Getting the colour to match

Through creating my website I have learnt a way of making sure I have the exact colour match. I realised that once I have chosen the colour, it then comes up with a colour code (shown in the bottom right of the first photo). I then copy and pasted it into the same bar that comes up when I edited the a different piece of text so I now have the same colour to match and continue the house style.

Difficulties during filming

We were trying to get a high angle shot but it was proving to be difficult to keep a steady shot along with it. To solve this issue we played about with a number of ways like this putting the tripod on the table and chairs. As silly as it looks, it worked and we got the shots we needed.

Although this is a tiny process we learnt that within media things take more than one try and if it doesn't work then we shouldn't give up but just look for alternative routes.

Using the tripod

After the class criticism we decided we should get a tripod to overcome the issues of the shaky camera, we spent a bit of time getting used to it and learning how to get it at different angles and how to change the height.

Website ideas

Here are some ideas for our websites, these are general ones and we will each have our own interpretations of it.

Editing process

Today we spent some more time editing. One thing we wanted to portray in our video was that some of the scenes are set in the past. We looked at other videos and how they do this and saw that it is by applying an effect to make it black and white. This is what we have done below.....

We also tried out different types of effects we could use, some worked and some didn't but this was all for trial and error. By doing this we have learnt how to apply effects and how to see what worked well and what didn't, we can use this knowledge for future editing



Class analysis constructive criticism

Today in class we all got the chance to view each other's music videos so far, we were all asked to fill out one of these sheets as groups so everyone can comment on what we believed were the good points of the video and what we could also improve on.

I have also made a list of the common results of the feedback and what we can do to improve the video. This will be useful for us to follow when looking for what to change.

Filming snapshots: 16/12/13

Again we have a video of the snapshots that our camera has taken during the filming. We continue to keep these because it reminds us of the progress we are making as a group.

Filming snapshots: 20/12/13

Here is another video of snapshots that our camera takes during our filming shoots.

Second photoshoot for digipak

Here are the photos from our second photo shoot for the digipak. These photos are the preferred ones over the previous because now Natasha is used to the camera there is more confidence in the photograph and it is shown when comparing the two. As a group we have decided that we will all use different photos for our digipaks but they will come from this shoot to continue the idea of the house style. From taking the photos we have learnt that it takes time for these things to come together and that they will not always be perfect first time round. 

Digipak group style

Here is a 'Stupeflix' of a digipak idea we had as a group. By researching into other artists we have learnt about typical conventions that they follow and ways that we will either follow or subvert them.

Choosing the website style

Website planning

Improvements

Here is a basic mindmap we created to show what improvements we can make in this future. This is useful because it reminds us of what mistakes we made before and how we can erase them in future.

Third shoot with Cameron

Today we had another filming shoot and with this one we used Cameron. As we had a whole day to do this we spent time filming our inside and outside shots, and because Cameron was willing to stay with us we came back to our laptop to put the clips onto iMovie to look properly at what we had and then from that we knew what then had to be re-filmed or changed in the next section of clips. We did this in total 3 three which was really helpful as we could see where we were going wrong with the previous ones and whilst watching them we came up with exciting new ideas. The camera we used takes photos as we are filming and we decided that it is important to keep them so we can use them to see the progress we are making. Here is a short clip of the photos that were taken this day:

Second filming shoot

Here are some photos from our second shoot.

• The focus for this one was mainly on Natasha so we could get most of the scenes to create the narrative of the song. 
• This is the shoot where we tried to use the male character as Charlie, however after this we have now changed to Cameron. 
• As the main focus was on Natasha there wasn't all that many clips including Charlie but the ones we did have, have now been re-filmed with Cameron in this. 
• We have learnt that plans don't always go the way we expect them to and that when working as a group on a project like this we need to expect to encounter problems. Now we have overcome this we can work towards a better result.

First upload of the music video

This is the first upload of our music video, we know there are still a lot of changes to be done but we are so happy with how its turning out. I am learning more and more how to use the features of iMovie such as editing and adding transitions which make such a big difference. An important thing I've learnt is that the scenes need to be short, when they are long it drags and make the video boring, this is something we're still working on.

Changes for the good!

At the start of the coursework we had many changes and difficulties within our actors. This was mainly due to scheduling and managing all of our time together. Finally and thankfully it stuck that Cameron would be our male actor, and this is one change we are really glad we made. Trying out the other actors before it was clear that it didn't work as they looked uncomfortable on screen and we are pleased we've learnt through 'trial-and-error', to get the perfect actor of Cameron.

Cameron and Tasha look so comfortable together and we think the proxemics are great as it really shows the intimacy of a couple. Although this seemed like a major problem at first that we would have to change the actors it was a blessing as we have found how to manipulate Cameron and Tasha's friendship on screen, and this is how the narrative in the video is really told.