Media Words for A2 // Tagxedo

I made a picture of words relevant to our media Alevel. I used the website Tagxedo

My Group // Music Video

Today we got in our groups for our media music video.

I am in a group with India and Dom

In the lesson we are brainstorming about what songs and ideas we have for our music video. We have a lot of different ideas that we could use but we need to narrow them done and get a sense of what genre we are going to use.

Over the weekend we are going to choose 2 songs each and then decided what song out of the 6 is best fitted for our idea.

In the lesson we came up with a vague idea of having a riot in the woods with slow motion actions going go.

Video about Music Festivals and Artist Promotion

Digipak & Homepage // T-Shirt Weather by Circa Waves

This was the homepage I designed for Circa Waves:

I decided to put their album art work as the background to advertise it.
I then put tabs on the home page along with their logo of their name.
I put their newest video at the top to help promote their music.
When you scroll down you will see their music which you can listen to and their tour dates. I also added links to their social media so fans can follow them.

My digpak:
For the image I just found one that I liked on google:

I then cropped the image to make it the classic digipak size, I then made the contrast greater by using the burn tool.

I then added in the logo:

After this I found a font similar to the logo to write the name of the song on the front.

The final result:

Music Video Idea 3 // T-Shirt Weather by Circa Waves

My third music video idea is Circa Waves song T-Shirt Weather.

Circa Waves are a British indie-rock band. Like The Kooks they all play their own instruments and write their own music.

The star image is indie/alternative/rock, however as they aren't really that well known they are defiantly classed as being indie. At this stage in their career I think that they are more focused on trying to get their music well known to care about their images but just like the Kooks you can see that the way they dress and the music they make helps label their star image as indie.

Bands similar to them are: The Kooks, Catfish & The Bottlemen, The Vaccines and Jamie T

My Idea:

My idea for this music video is just to have the band playing the song in lots of different locations with the shots keep cutting between them. For example; in the woods, by the sea, in a town, etc.

Within the video we will cut to shots of the band messing around and having fun aka water fights, paint fights, in the sea, dancing in the street, etc. The main objective of this video is to make it look fun to capture the theme of the song.

This idea fits with the track because its about having fun in the summer and thinking back to the fun times they had.

The video fits with the bands image cause they are a indie band they care more about the music and how it is portrayed rather than making a deep meaningful video.

Digipak & Homepage // Forgive & Forget by The Kooks

This was the website homepage I created for The Kooks:

To get their logo I just typed into google "Kooks logo transparent" and pasted the image into the webpage to create the banner.

I decided to keep their page really simple, so on the front page I have their most recent video playing and the tabs that link to different pages.

My digipak:
First I found an image that I thought would look good as the art work:

I then cropped it to the right digipak size and added the transparent logo from google on to it:

After this I wanted to add the name of the song to the front however, I couldn't find the right font for the rest of the text so I compromised with a different font.

Here was the result:

Music Video Idea 2 // Forgive & Forget by The Kooks

My second music video idea is The Kooks song called Forgive & Forget.

The Kooks are a British band rock/indie band. They all play their own instruments and write their own songs. 

Their star image is indie and like Hozier they seem to care about their music more then their image. However you can see that they want to portray the "indie" image.

Bands similar to them are: The Libertines, Arctic Monkeys, The Lost Patrol and The 1975

My Idea:

At the beginning of the video band playing in a room with lights on them (a typical music video set up) and the camera does close ups of them playing instruments, the camera also does lots of panning shots of the band. The band are all playing their own instruments and the lead singer will constantly move around and sing to the camera.

During this performance the video will cut between a story of a couple. The story relates to the song as the man is bored of the relationship so he is telling her: "You say you need someone to love her but it ain't me". However, the girl is clingy and keeps following him around.

You will see the couple doing everyday things: shopping, sitting on the sofa, in a restaurant. However, the man will look bored all the time will singing the lyrics that relate to the moment. This will cut between the band playing the song. This video will be light hearted and fun just as the song is.

This video idea fits in with the track because its about a relationship not working out and the man wants to move on from the relationship.
The video fits in with the band image because you see them play their instruments which is a big part of the band, this is one of the Kooks more upbeat and fun songs so this can be represented in the video to show a different side to the band.

Digipak & Homepage // Work Song by Hozier

This is the website I created for Hozier:

I decided to keep it simple and have the album artwork as the main image that you see, this will help promote the album.
I also added tour dates to the side so people can see where he is playing.

I embedded the video so when you open his homepage you hear his most famous song "Take Me to Church", this also helps promote the album because this song was really popular.

If you scroll down on the page you can see that I added "Latest News" this helps to keep the fans informed on whats happeneing and where he is performing next.












My digipak:

As Hozier already has an album out I thought I would design one for the single Work Song.
I used photoshop to help me edit the images and the words.

Here is what I did:

I first put my background image on. I then used the "burn tool" to make the colours more contrasted within the image.

I then googled "Hozier logo white transparent". I then took this and layered it on to the photo, I did this so the font was the same to how it always is.
I then downloaded the font called "Hozier - Skinny Bold" to type out the words "Work song"

I then made it white so it stood out. However, you it still didn't stand out enough for my liking so I took the paint brush and set the opacity to 50% and was able to colour in the background a soft grey so you can see the words more clearer.

Here is my final result:

Music Video Idea 1 // Work Song by Hozier

My first idea for a music video is for Hozier's song called Work Song.

Hozier is an Irish singer and songwriter, he rose to fame with his hit song "Take Me To Church" and released his first album in September 2014.

His star image is the "real" kind, he always looks a bit scruffy and plays with a guitar at this shows. He is the type of artist who focuses more on the music then his image.

Artists who are similar to Hozier are: George Ezra, Ed Sheeran, James Bay & Vance Joy.

My Idea: 

In the video there will be clips of a man singing the song with darkness surrounding him apart from some lights that silhouette his face and body which show him singing the song. There will be a band in the background so the light can catch them in some shots.

The story of the video is about a man whose wife has died and he is thinking back to when she was alive. In this video there will be a scene where the man is at a bar and is getting drunk, he then starts a fight and gets kicked out. You will see him walking up a lane with tress around him in slow motion, during the video we keep cutting back to this shot of him walking.

In the video we will see flashbacks to him and his wife, from when she was alive, these will include dancing, sitting on the sofa, an argument, etc. There will be close ups of small gestures like hand holding, smiling, etc.

At the end of the video we see that the man is in a grave yard and he kneels by the grave.

The costume of the man will be normal clothing e.g jeans, boots and a checkered shirt.
However, during the performance bit he will wear all black.
The women will also dress in normal clothing: dress/skirt/jeans and a top.



The video relates to the song because doing hard labour for little pay is stressful, especially if you have debt or having to provide for another. No matter hard he works, he is reminded that as long as he has his girl, he can continue to work hard because she's at home waiting for him. It's also a reminder to continue working at bettering himself for her; to not go back into the lazy, drunken state she found him in. And even when the hard work of life eventually gets the better of his physical body, that still is not enough to keep her out of his heart. Even death cannot keep them apart. However, I have made it so the video makes the song look like a tribute to her and their life they had together. 


The video fits in with the brand of the artists because he doesn't worry about his image he is more focused on the music element of things and how to tell stories through his music and his videos. 

Using Wix // Making a Website

In the lesson today we starting to use Wix to create a website for our musician. We did this to help comapre it to Wordpress to decided which website worked better. 

I really liked Wix and found it much easier to use and it was so much faster than using wordpress. 

It was really easy to choose a template and insert the images into it:

 

I was able to do this for lots of images and my website was starting to come together:

  

I was also able to add tour dates and the "latest news" this was good because it made it look like a real website and it would keep the fans updated.

I was also able to edit different pages if I wanted to:

My final website looked like this: 

I enjoyed useing Wix more then Wordpress because I found it easier and quicker to create my website.

Audience Profiling

Video: You Belong With Me by Taylor Swift

Genre: Pop

Target Audience: Teenage girls aged 10-15 (Students)

Other artists they might listen to: Justin Bieber, Ed Sheeran, One Direction, Conor Maynard

How much they spend on music: Use parents money or pocket money. They might by concert tickets and merchandise aswell as music. 

My audiences "Val" would be a groupies because they just want to be accepted by the artist and society.

They would typically read magazines such as:

 They would invest in concert tickets, merchandise, festivals the artist is playing at, etc.

Lip Sync Exercise // Evaluation

What did you do to prepare for the lip sync exercise?
To prepare for the lip sync exercise we planned what we were going to wear: all black.
What make up we were going to do: War paint stripes
We needed to learn the lyrics to the song Shake It Off. The lyrics we needed to learn were:

Our final look was:

What did you do in the studio?
When we were in the studio we got split into 3 groups and each went to a station to start filming. Our first station was the green screen. Here we did wide shots, close ups and random shots. 

 
We then moved on to the station which had the cave background where we used the dolly to move the camera. This was harder to film because we had to use the dolly with the camera. We had to make marks on the floor to make sure we knew how far to move the camera.

After this we then moved on to using a sofa as a prop and we had to use a camera with a fixed lense, this meant that focusing was a little difficult because we had to use a tape measure to work out the foucsing. This scene was fun to film because it was our last station so we were just getting extra shots and were messing around getting fun shots.

What did I learn?
In this block lesson I learnt how to use a fixed lense on a camera and how to use a dolly camera, I also learnt how to lip sync properly and I also learnt how to work as a team to be able to set up shots properly. By watching the people who were the floor managers I learned what they needed to do and what you would have to do in a role like that.


What did you do in the suite & what did you learn?
In the edit suite we were taught how to cut to the beat and sync up the lyrics with the video. 

We had to stack up all our shots that we had taken and put them into a bin where we kept all our rushes. We then had to sync them up to the beat and get the lip syncing to macth the music. This was a struggle to do because the whole room was playing the same song so we had to listen closly to our music to get the beats right.

Did you make any mistakes on the day, how could we improve next time?
We made a few mistakes when filming in terms of making sure the camera was in focus because sometimes we would be in the middle of the shot and realise it was out of focus.
I think that we also needed to communicate more because we needed to know how much of us was in the frame when we were shooting because sometimes we would have a person in shot who wasn't dancing because they didn't know they were in the shot.

Our final product: