Thursday, 17 February 2011

Evaluation Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Ideas
Our ideas came from looking at various styles of eccentric make up and videos where entropy is used to create a quirky and unique feel. On the flip side, we also wanted to create a mainstream party video which we got inspiration from many music videos and other texts. We explored the different ways in which we could combine the two contrasting styles through looking at various media texts.


Our idea for eccentric make up was based upon various photos we found on the internet and shots from video clips. We decided that the characters could be playing toys that have come to life. We felt this was an exciting and original concept and therefore needed to make sure the make up and costume looks believable.
This photo was our inspiration for the make up of Leah Cheung. We wanted to make her look like a harajuku girl with eccentric make up and bright colours. Therefore, our make up artist Carley did a very similar style to the photograph. We loved the ideas for the bright colours and mirrored this in Leah's character in the video. It also inspired us to make it look eccentric but also fashionable to give the style an edge.


This photograph inspired the style and make up for Sam and Em's make up. We really liked the idea of dolls, which evolved into the beginning part of our video (the doll waking up and turning on the Ipod.) This photo also inspired us to think about movement, that the dolls should move in a broken manner which would create a toy effect.

The texts that inspired us are as followed:


This video inspired us for both parts of the video. Firstly, we loved the eccentric and crazy costumes in the video teamed with a glamorous yet edgy style. Secondly, the snappy party shots caught our attention and inspired us to stage a 'out of control' party. We loved all the fast editing shots and the pans of people in various places around the house. This inspired us to create a hedonistic scene which we thought would work well with the weird, creepy toy scenes.



This video by Mike Posner inspired us for the party scenes, we loved the flashing lights with people dancing which can be seen in our video. We also really liked the way that the dancing was teamed well with the beat of the song, which we also tried to mirror in our video.



This video of the Skins advert was the biggest inspiration for the video. We loved the fast paced editing mixed with the dark lighting and entropic shots, such as the bear jumping on the bed. We wanted to create this sense of mainstream fun and entropy for our own video because we loved the way that there was also a darker, hardcore side to the advert alongside the fun party atmosphere. I felt that the video captured a hedonistic teenage vibe which is what we wanted to create.

We wanted to avoid video styles such as...


Although we enjoy their music and like the video, I felt as though the Indie style has been overused recently in music videos with many bands showing themselves playing with a similar style and quirkiness to other bands. We didn't like the slow pace of these videos and their similarity with many other videos of this genre. Instead, we wanted to combine the entropic quality of indie videos with the qualities of mainstream videos.

You can see how our inspiration from our research helped us create and mould our video in our 'Mood Board' shown below where we put together all our ideas for the style, creativity and originality for the product.


Audience feedback...
Our audience research helped direct our creativity. Here is a focus group based around our Audience Profile Mood Board which was on Prezi. We filmed it to get an idea about what our audience would think about our final product.

We were very pleased with our audience feedback, it helped show us that we were going in the right direction with the planning of the video and the audience research.

I also got our audience to do a focus group based around my print work. This really helped to direct changes for my print work.


I would say that our products are not much different to real media products. I feel that the print work and video looks effective and proffesional due to the costuming. However, obviously we do not have proffessional actors in our video which obviously sets us apart from real media products, although I do feel that our cast put in a lot of effort and really went for it when filming and when taking the photographs for the print work. Obviously there is the issue of budget and lack of technology, big media companies will have the latest forms of technology and the computers at my house and college were very slow. However, I feel that we did the best we could with the equipment we could and it looks quite proffesional.

Originality...
We tried to be as original as possible by using weird costumes, odd shots etc in the puppet scenes. However, I do feel we have in some aspects copied products such as Alice in Wonderland, which uses the same style of entropy. We have also used a lot of ideas taken from mainstream products. Here is a Prezi showing all the different products which are similar to mine.


Entropy...
The part of my video which uses entropy can be seen in the puppet scenes. There are many shots of girls with eccentric make up doing odd actions and dancing around. At the start of the video, there is a wind up doll shown in black and white grain to create an old cinema style effect. It is very entropic and sets up a weird feel for the video. The puppet shots are repeated throughout the video to create a dream-like atmosphere. The repetition also follows the Auteur Theory of Steve Neale who believed that audiences take pleasure from repition and difference. The difference can be seen in various amounts of three second shots which are only shown once and the repitition is shown

Redundant...
Some of the parts of the video are redundant. The scenes where Sam is putting on make up and the party shots. These type of shots can be seen in lots of other media products. It does not follow a narrative, although the Proppian heroin is Sam (the main girl who puts on make up.) However, there are lots of different characters in the video and it is for the audience to read who is their favourite.

Evaluation - Question 3

Thursday, 3 February 2011

Final Music Video

Here is out uncensored video which will be shown to adults.



Here is our censored video.

Thursday, 20 January 2011

Half finished media studies video



We published this on Facebook to get feedback from our target audience. This was to see if we could improve upon anything in the second half of the video, or change something in the first half. We created a separate group and added those who we wanted to appeal to. The feedback we got was really positive. It is as follows:

    • Rosie Hazell LOVE IT!!! It's actually amazing! Like waaaaaay better than I ever imagined.... Especially like the beginning, and all the speeded up bits :) (b ut don't like the bit with me singing ;) )
      Yesterday at 10:57am · · 1 person
    • Milly Morris You are fine. x
      22 hours ago ·
    • Milly Morris as in F-I-N-EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
      22 hours ago ·
    • Samantha Roberts mazing :)
      20 hours ago ·
    • Jess Hill i agree with roz, i think the me and her singing bit is ugly and offensive and innappropriate
      16 hours ago · · 2 people

Wednesday, 19 January 2011

Editing: Wind up doll sequence

We began editing for the wind up doll sequence. We uploaded it into premier pro and edited it in accordance with the music and the storyboard we had previously made. Jodie and I then thought it would be a good idea to add effects to the shots. We thought it would look good to make them black and white with a grain sheen across it. This would make it appear older, similar to an old film reel which was the effect we are going for. This would also make the coloured shots seem a lot more powerful and punchy after the grey shots.
Here is a sequence of the finished shots:






We have started filming the party sequences. The way we are doing this is to make sure the shots are short and snappy to create the chaotic effect.

Filming 3 Saturday 16th

Firstly, I began the day by creating the mise-en-scene. I did this in three different rooms, the bathroom (used for the print work) and my sisters bedroom (also used for the print work.) I tried to make sure that the mise-en-scene was very similar to the print work to allow continuity.

Secondly, I started creating the mise-en-scene for the party scenes in my garage. I did this by collecting lots of empty wine bottles, beer cans etc and littering them all over the side. I then threw streamers, party poppers all over the room and littered it with wine glasses. I also dangled fairy lights from the ceiling to add to the glamorous feeling. I also placed lots of random objects about the room to add to the interesting effect in the video, for example; cowboy hats, a duck with sunglasses on and a tractor go-kart. I felt that this would inspire the cast to use the objects around them and then it would create the wild, crazy atmosphere.

We had planned that Sam, Emily, Leah and Cat arrived at 3 to film the separate shots of them in the house. However, Emily was really late so we had to film her shots later on in the evening. This did not set us back though as we filmed the 'getting ready' shots of Sam relatively quickly and she was very enthusiastic and efficient. We then filmed the shots of Leah and Cat kissing in the bathroom. I had filmed the panning shots through the house earlier that day so we didn't waste time filming those rather than filming the cast.

Once everyone arrived, we began filming all the group shots. Although some people didn't turn up, we had around 20 people and this was really good as we could create lots of good dance shots and shots of various people. We provided them with food so that they would have the energy to do a long shoot, as we expected it would take around 3/4 hours to get enough shots.

We put loud music on and just allowed them to dance and drink alcohol while filming them, that way it didn't look staged. We referred back to the shot list but also improvised a lot of shots, for example, Leah and Emily walking in and dishing out the alcohol and various close ups of people dancing.

We had to change part of the video as Jordan and Sam Ruane became too embarrassed to dance, so we had to use George. We changed the storyline to George walking through the door and Sam looking flirtatiously at him. He then got approached by lots of girls but only wants to talk to Sam. We filmed lots of shots of Sam and George looking longingly at each other. It looked really good although it was quite funny to film.

We filmed lots of shots inside the house, such as shots of people 'crashed out' on my bed and shots of Sam 'waking up' from her 'dream.' Overall, I felt the shoot went really well. I feel that the mise-en-scene and lighting came across really well on the camera and the acting looked really natural and it seemed as though they were having a really good time.




Thursday, 13 January 2011

Filming 2 - Wednesday 12th - Carleys house

Estimated time: 3 hoursEverything went smoothly in getting the lights and cast to Carley's house and the costumes, make up looked really fantastic and exactly how we wanted them. The 'wind up doll' dress looked absolutely amazing, Carley had done a really good job on the key part and it looked really effective. Here are some pre-production photographs we took

Emily Jones putting on costume and point shoes, make up not complete.












Sam costume






























Emily Jones, left (without full make up on) and Leah Cheung, right(with full make up on)














Make up artist Carley putting make up on Sam.














Carley putting make up on Leah Cheung.


























Here are unedited images of what the cast looked like: Jodie and I were really pleased with how the costumes/make up looked like.


















After we had applied the make up etc we began filming. Firstly, we began filming the 'wind up doll scene' with Em. We instructed her for each shot and filmed approximately 8 seconds for each shot so that it would be long enough to edit each one properly. We filmed each shot according to the shot list we had printed off.
We filmed lots of separate shots of the characters to make sure we had enough to work with and edit, for example, we did lots of shots of Leah Cheung and Sam dancing against a white wall. We also took a lot of stop motion shots on the SLR Camera, for example, shots of the Sam shutting and opening her eyes in a scary manner.
We also improvised a lot of the shots, filming Carleys bearded dragon, Gizmo. We positioned Gizmo on a table full of dust and an old fashioned sewing machine which added to the weird mise-en-scene. We also did up close shots of Gizmo to add effect, which meant we had to film up close for ages and wait for the creature to move as they are naturally still animals.

I found that the lighting was easy to set up as I had had an instruction from Kate earlier in the day. However, in Carleys room there it was quite a confined space and it was hard to position the lights pointing towards the cast. Also, I feel we were using the wrong Gel for most of the shoot, we used to blue gel which made it a bit too dark. In retrospect, we should have experimented with the lights more before beginning to film.

Half way through the shoot, both cameras ran out of battery! Luckily, we had filmed a lot. However, we had not filmed the vital part which was where the puppets slump over, showing that they are toys. This meant that we needed to change the end of the video. Jodie and I decided a good idea on Saturday would be to film Sam 'waking up' in my bed, implicating it was all a dream. She could then walk over to her dressing table (seen in previous shots) and a few of the props from the Puppet scene could be on the desk. This would add an extra twist to the video and make it slightly more relevant.