A2 Media Studies

Audio and voice recording >>

Digipak   For my digipak I wanted to do something creative with SerifDraw6 as I used it for my GCSE coursework and wanted to build upon the skills that I already had. Recently, I have been listening to a lot of indie music and noticed that several bands use old pictures from their childhoods etc as the front covers of their albums and EPs. I decided not to do this, as I wanted my artist to be able to be recognised easily to allow for the creation of a persona. However, I did use it as part of the overall aesthetic for my digipak. I also liked the style of the recent Red Velvet album cover, so I took a lot of inspiration from that as well.   I used two old pictures that I found, one of me and my older sister skipping rocks on a beach as children, and one of my mum and uncle on the bonnet of an old car. However, as I wanted to be creative, I used the cutout tool and removed the background from these pictures, which originally looked like this:   T...

We created another survey on surveymonkey in order to get audience feedback on our final product. The first questions we asked were in order to separate our target audience, and after this we filtered responses so that only male and females aged 16-25 who enjoy the indie genre's responses were taken into account. 1) After watching the music video does it look like a real music video?  All 13 answered yes, meaning that we achieved our goal in creating a realistic and believable text. I believe we achieved this by researching and utilising Goodwin's music video theory and also some of the conventions of the indie genre. 2) Did you understand the music video?  Although 2 of the 13 asked did not understand the music video, this was expected as we intentionally wanted to have a complex narrative. Overall, we were able to successfully convey the narrative without dialogue by relying on codes and conventions. 3) What is your favourite part of the music video?  ...

I created a survey online and sent it to a few people that were in our target audience. I included questions at the beginning just to ensure that the only answers I considered were those of my target audience.

After getting most of our footage, we made a rough edit that we could later come back to and 'fine tune'.

I wanted to do a moodboard to help pinpoint the themes and aesthetics that I am going to use in my digipak and print advert for said digipak. However, I realised that I already had three moodboards on my blog already, and wanted to branch out and try something new. So instead, I decided to make a 'moving moodboard' in the form of a video, where I take clips from various different media texts and formats to make a short video with the kind of aesthetic I am looking for. I wanted to capture a melancholy feeling, which is difficult through static images alone, which is why I think that this was helpful to my research. I also wanted to portray her as romantic but 'edgy', which I did using clips from various films, interviews and TV shows that I like. The first clip is from Amélie , which I subtitled for clarity; the second clip is from a 1960s interview with Marilyn Monroe, recorded a few months before she committed suicide and the last audio clip is from a short web-seri...

For the filming we did this weelend (as last week's weather was too bad), Ella and I decided that my makeup and hair were not 'edgy' enough, and we created a new look based off of Lorde's album cover and the image we want to portray for our artist. Because of this change, I made another (higher quality) video detailing my makeup process. It is much easier to see as I recorded the whole thing instead of using the time-lapse feature, meaning that it is a lot smoother and higher quality despite the fact that I am using the front-facing camera. The song in the video is Lucky Girl by Fazerdaze .               

In this hour I tried to make our music video more creative by adding some lens flares and light leaks to make our shots look more interesting. It is a common theme of indie videos to have these kind of distortions, very prominent in both Lana Del Rey and Lorde's music videos, so I thought it would also be a good way to include some popular indie conventions. First, I went onto youtube and I searched for 'light leak overlay' and then I downloaded it onto the mac. Then, I moved it into Final Cut Pro X and bladed the parts that I wanted. I placed them over the clips that I wanted and then I turned down the opacity so that the original clip could be seen through it but still opaque enough that it was visible. I think it turned out well, I so I plan to do this to more clips in the video.

In this session, after listening to our audience feedback as well as the feedback from our teacher, we decided that our video needed more interest in terms of editing. Therefore I came up with the idea of adding 'light leaks' as an overlay to add interest to the live performance, and we also googled some new editing techniques and then taught ourselves how to create a 'freeze frame' effect. Firstly, I went onto YouTube and downloaded some light leak overlays -- both a red one and a blue one -- we planned on using both and changing them halfway through so that the colours represent the singer's passion and love at the start which then changes to her sadness at the break up at the end. I then put these videos into Final Cut Pro X and layered them over the live performance, turning the opacity down so that the video was visible underneath. At first, this looked unprofessional because the light leak also went into the next shot and then abruptly cut off, but I fixed thi...

As I mentioned in the first editing post, we started this session by changing the font and text at the beginning of the video. We got rid of the 'scrolling' effect as we decided that it was too difficult to read (also it looked unprofessional as the text appeared to 'jump' instead of entering smoothly), and instead we added a semi-transparent white box and then some simple text. We think that this conforms more to the indie genre as well, because many artists use a plain font at the start of their music videos rather than something more decorative like we had originally used. This was a short session because we didn't have much time. However, in the next session we plan on focusing on the audience feedback.

In this session, we finally had all of the footage we needed and therefore we were able to complete a rough edit of our final video. We started with the fight scene between the main character and her girlfriend. Because the music itself doesn't crescendo at this point, in order to create tension we made lots of fast edits and cuts between the narrative and the live performance using the blade tool to show the main characters' anger. We then used the final 'date' shot to create a contrast between these two situations, with warm lighting and happy facial expressions, as well as a two shot which is framed to show their closeness, juxtaposed with the fight scene that was previous in which one character leaves the two shot. After this session, we had created a rough edit.

I filmed a time-lapse of the process of me applying makeup and styling my hair before the filming we are going to do today (weather permitting). Below is the footage, complete with my annotations of what products I'm using and what I'm doing. The quality is lacking slightly because I was only able to film this on my iPad, but the clip at the end is higher quality and shows my makeup and hair properly. The song playing in the background is by weiddough (an independent soundcloud artist) titled Ebb Tide ( So Harpy). 

In this session, we mainly focused on the creation of a narrative. After establishing the narrative (as we had to change the storyboard on the day) we then started to put the library scene into the live performance using the blade tool. We were sure to edit in time with the music because we wanted to conform to this aspect of Goodwin's music video theory. As we didn't have all of the necessary footage, this was a very short session.

Although I wasn't present for the final piece of filming, we made some changes and therefore I am making this post to update the storyboard. Firstly, as Ella was restricted in location, she replaced the bed scene and the coffee shop scene. She also had to improvise in that a number of the actors that were meant to participate didn't show up and therefore she had to make it look like the two actors that were present were different people throughout the opening.