Starting A2

For our A2 course we are creating a music video in small groups. During the summer holidays I brain stormed a few ideas of what style and genre I want to look into and then I will speak to the other members of my class and see if anyone else has similar interests.

A background to the music industry and some basic theory

Genre is the classification of the text according to its style and content. Pop is generally the broadest type of genre, although genre are constantly being invented, crossed, mixed up and revisited. When music is put into a categorizes like genres it makes it easier for the customer to find the right style from him/her and also allows them to find other music from different artist which he/she might like.

 

Theses are the categories that most music would fall into:

 

•   Pop

•   Dance

•   R&B

•   Hip-Hop/Rap

•   Rock

•   Punk

•   Country&Western

•   Folk

•   Jazz

•   Blues 

•   Latin

•   Gospel

•   Reggae

•   New Age

This is a picture of the girl band ‘Girls Aloud’ who are a ‘shiny trash aesthetic.’ They are a perfect example of a pop group.

 

After thinking about ideas for my music video it has made me realize that I need to think about what genre music I would like to use as this will help me decide who my target audience would be.

 

Genre and artist-

Image is a key point and is important to the fans as it also help categorize them before they career even starts, especially synthetic artists who base themselves on their look and not their talent. Once they have been put in genres they start to pick up stereotypes for example Hip/hop rap artists videos consist of, " driving slowly in big old open-topped cars round a generic 'hood, swinging their arms and waving at the booty they pass by".

 Adele who is a classic pop style artist is normally photographed wearing classic retro clothing to associate herself with her role models, Aretha Franklin and Dusty Springfield this gives the audience the impression that she is a serious and soulful artist. This attracts a large audience mainly because she doesn’t come across as fake.

Evolution of a career artist - Britney

Evolution of career artist britney from Mimaroblin

Organic and Synthetic artist powerpoint

Organic artist from Mimaroblin

Start of A2

This is the start of my A2 course work where we will be studying the music industry and making a music video and supporting products for our course work.
Personally my music choice is slightly alturnative although like mainstream music such as Rihanna who I have just watched in concert, I like artist who are mostly unknown and are organically talented vocalist instead of pop.
I go to music festivals such as Reading festival every year which has a mixture of rock and alturnative music. My music taste ranges between artists, as I also enjoy watching the classics in concerts such as Kylie and Robbie Williams.
I have also made a music video before in my spare time with a friend
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiBAlArIgT0

This is an image of me at Bastille at reading festival. I have alwaysliked bastille espeshially before they became famous when they used to do small gigs on bridges ect..


Another artist who I am interested in as a style icon as well as a music interest is Lil Debbie, her genre is rap/hiphop which I also like.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykwwz20RULg


This is a very quirky artist who I like he was an Orthodox Jew who shaved his beard and hair off and became a hiphop rap singer. He too is a very organic artist as he started his singing career himself although he is know for his big change he is mostly known for his talent in singing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JShdnOiKHeU

Audience feed back

The last thing we did for the build up for our thriller was to get audience feed back, this was a very useful exercise as after working on our thriller for such a long time we started no to notice the mistakes or obvious problems, for example the plot of the thriller, to us it would be obvious but to an audience it might not be as clear.


FEED BACK ON PLOT:
most of the feed back on the plot was actually positive as they seem to understand it well. Some people said it was an apocalypse thriller which is what we aimed for. They also said that they were clear in what was behind the door which is we wanted people to think, we wanted them to all have a different idea of what was behind the door, some said; 'murder', 'alien', 'someone or thing', 'zombie invasion', 'someone has been trapped'. All these feed backs are positive as wanted them to be not clear on whats going on- like a 'cliff hanger'

FEED BACK ON STRENGTHS:
The main strengths we found were to do with the title sequence and the string, 'focus pulls with the titles was effective'. They said that the placement of the titles was effective as the were in the right place, they also liked how some of the titles moved along the string or were line up on the string. Another thing that was brought up was the tension build up of the strings and cans sequence created tension as for a lot of the time they were sure what it was about because all they saw for the beginning part was string and cans and mess, they also said that the tension was caused by bot a lot of sound. The feed back on the strengths was very positive as they brought up all the parts which we spent the longest time making and creating which is a good thing.

FEED BACK ON IMPROVEMENTS:
Some people said that we could have used music rather than just using background sounds and download clip sounds, this they said would have created eere feelings. We were told that quicker editing would have also made piece a little more spooky and would build up tension



SOME EXAMPLES OF FEEDBACK:

NAME: Alex Wadstein

PLOT: The world may have recently gone bad (still normal objects ie coke cans) Therefore, for some reason , a man has to sleep in a tent that is ripped so that if anyone comes he knows, could be an alien thriller?

STRENGTHS: I like the focus on the string in the beginning, it supposes normal everyday items (coke) it makes a seemingly normal object seem abnormal

IMPROVEMENTS: Shot with more slow ‘artistic’ shots with an eree background i.e shot in a big field. But good!

NAME: Charlie Feeney

PLOT: A man is hiding in a tent, threat from outside. Something tugging on a string. Goes to see what is it. Apocalypse or weird creatures?

STRENGTHS: The silence, it builds tension and makes you feel on edge. Also I like the colours, pale on dark.

IMPROVEMENTS: Some creepy music or more drone sounds

NAME: Seb

PLOT: Is about a man being hunted by something or someone and is trying to hide or get away. A murder is behind the door?

STRENGTHS: The tension building and sound

IMPROVEMENTS: Quicker editing to create more tension

Evalutation task 7

Looking back at your preliminary task what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the product?

After watching through my prelim task I've realised that the shots we used in it were basic and simple easy shots to do for example we used, over the shoulder and close and mid shots. Personally I feel the smoothness of the the sequence was choppy and didn't flow well. There are also a few places in the prelim which I have noticed that we haven't thought about where we are filming from , for example when filming through the blinds you can see us filming from the opersite window.

In our thriller I found that we used a lot more complex shots for example, extreme close up, movement shots and point of view shots. The whole flow between the shots were more flowing and instead of doing easy long shots we did shorter and more complex shots which makes it more interesting to watch.  We also included focus pulls and other techniques that we learnt on the day which I think made a big difference to our thriller.
















The  Mise en scene in our prelim was vary basic and we only used one prop which made the whole sequence very clear about what it was about. I think we could have come out with a lot more other ideas for using our prop as we only used it in one shot. We didn't really focus on the clothing or where it was set either.

In our thriller we used a vast amount of props for it including; a tent, string, rubbish and other general waste products which made the area look lived in, we also boarded up the windows with cardboard to make it look like he is hiding. We also focused a lot on the clothing and dressed him up in dark baggy clothing, made his grow his facial hair and he wore big boots. I found that small things which we thought about make a big different even if you don't notice them quickly I think miss en scene does make a difference.

The editing on our prelim is vary basic as the shots don't flow from shot to shot they were jumpy and looked slightly awkward, I think we should have blended the clips more when editing which would make the sequence better but as it was our first time using final cut pro we were very inexperienced and didn't know how to do a lot of these things.
Our editing obviously improved a lot more for our thriller as we were more confidence with using the program and we had longer to edit it which made a big difference as we got use to it over time. we included a lot new things which I didn't know how to use from the prelim such as adding titles and blending tools which made a big difference and made our thriller look more natural.
For sound in our prelim we literally just filmed whilst recording the sound at the same time, this made the voice sound weird and echoey. For our thriller on the other hand we dud various different things to make the sounds right, although we didn't have a script we had to build a base using the back ground sounds of when we shot on the day. We also used a recording muff which made the sound more clear, and then downloaded various different sounds which we needed off line and merged them into the background sounds so they were so crisp and loud.