8 facts about YouTube.

1. YouTube's website was officially launched in June 2005.
2. YouTube is within the technological constraits of standard browser software and relatively modest bandwidth.
3. YouTube set no limits on the number of videos users could upload.
4. YouTube's history conform to the Silicon Valley myth of the garage entrepreneur, where technological and business innovation comes from youthful visionaries working outside of established enterprises.
5. YouTube started out of humble origins in an office over a pizzeria with a paper sign on the door.
6. The moment of success for YouTube arrived in October 2006 when Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion.
7. By November 2007, YouTube was the most popular entertainment website in Britain.
8. YouTube is a simple, intergrated interface within which users can upload, publish and view streaming videos without high levels of technical knowledge.

Ultimatley, YouTube has created a free video website.

Audience Feedback.

I showed a few people from our target audience our storyboard animatic and asked them to make comments on our concept. From this task I found that:

• The irony between our concept and the lyrics of the song 'Feeling Good' has a great impact.
• The extremity of our concept has a good effect as it is kind of outrageous and therefore interests people as it has never been done before.
• However, there may be too much violence towards and the woman therefore giving off the impression that it is more of a one-sided thing and maybe he beats her rather than the message we wanted to put across which was that they both harm each other and enjoy it. Thus, we need to include something that will show that she acts with the same kind of behaviour back to him.

Digipak Research (2)

Digipak Research.

We want out Digipak to have a sense of enigma and puzzle. It will be Polysemic which means it will be open to many interpretations. Different audiences will bring different readings.

A good example of a modern Digipak like this is the album 'Casually dressed and deep in conversation' by Funeral for a Friend:

This album also uses intertexuality, the same as ours will do, as it is referencing previous texts. It is inspired by a painting by Rene Magritte:



Another famous digipak which also uses intertexuality is Madonna's album 'Celebration':



All these pictures are inspired by Andy Warhol's painting of Marilyn Monroe:



Our digipak will contain 6 panels. The front cover will contain the aritsts name in a large clear font. We will have a promotional sticker in the top left hand corner stating that it is a 'special edition' and contains bonus tracks.


The back cover will have the track listing, in the same font as the artist name on the front cover.
It will have the production info, the copyright info, the year of production (2011) and the record label logo.
We may also include the price on the back cover aswell as of course a barcode.

We want to use our star image of our band to market. So we are going to organise a photoshoot and then include in the digipak some panels that are pictures of the band. They have an indie rock style so this will hopefully market towards that kind of audience which is nowadays a very big audience especially around the ages of 16-25 which are the ages we are marketing to.

Copyright Permission For Track.

One of the requirements of the Advaned Production unit is that we seek permission for use of any music from the copyright holder. We fount out through google the name of the record company which holds the rights to the song Feeling Good by Muse, which is Warner Bros. We found out a form of contact and sent them this email:

To Whomever it may concern,


We are a group of A Level Students working on an A Level project for a qualification in Media Studies. We are writing to request permission to use the following track as part of this project:


Feeling Good by Muse.


With your permission the track would be used as the accompaniment to a short form video that is made purely for assessment purposes and will have no commercial usage. The video will be viewed only by members of the school community and the assessor of the examination board.


The artist and the copyright holder will of course be fully recognised in the pre-production and evaluation material that accompanies the project. We can also include a full copyright notice if required both in the planning material and on the video itself.


Yours sincerely,
Isabel Boddy, William Edgley, Abigail Douetil and Elizabeth Ward-Thomas.
Hurtwood House School.

Feedback

This is excellent work - there are evident clear accounts of your planning and research for your music video production day after half term.  I like the way in which decision making is evident along with reflection and revisions.  Your cast list has been agreed and you need to be working on the set design and organisation of production.  There are one or two ways to develop the blog.  First to begin using a wider range of blogging tools - there are lots of well presented images, but use of Flickr or powerpoint will increase the creativity that is shown on your blog.  Second the valid, detailed and reflective comments that you make need to be developed further with  key media concepts and theoretical ideas;  for example, link the planning to star image,  or how set design and lighting link to mise en scene and/ or what model's of lighting you are using in relation to your set - key, fill, directional, discuss the intensity and colour and what you are trying to represent about your artist. This will help make a more thorough evaluation of your work.  Well done excellent effort

CAST LIST FOR MUSIC VIDEO

CAST LIST

Molly Astley

Jake Cecil

Patch Wadsworth

Connor Vickery

Kyle Foreman

Freddy Dixon
Merlin Talard

MOLLY ASTLEY A2 CORNHILL playing the main girl.

JAKE CECIL A2 BWEBB playing the main guy.

PATCH WADSWORTH A2 BWEBB playing the lead singer.

CONNOR VICKERY A2 DAY HOUSE playing the keyboard.

JUSTIFICATION

Molly has acted out a 'hanging' scene before and will therefore be comfortable with doing it again; anyone else would probably get nervous. There are some scenes where the main part of the girl and the boy get quite close and so we would need somebody who Molly is comfortable with and she has said she is comfortable with Jake, therefore we need him so they can work well together. Connor can already play the song on the piano and so we would not have to get somebody to learn it. Patch knows the song and is comfortable with being the front man of the band as he has done it last year very effectively.

KYLE FOREMAN AS B WEBB playing the guitar.

FREDDY DIXON AS B WEBB playing the drums.

MERLIN TALARD AS PEASLAKE playing the bassist.

Dan's Feedback.

After speaking to the set design and lighting director, Dan, we realised that we need to think of a backdrop for our set. We decided that we want wallpaper as a backdrop, but the kind of wallpaper you would find in a dirty, sketchy hotel room. Therefore we are gonig to rip it up a little make it look dirtier (maybe throw some tea bags at it!). We're going to have this same backdrop for both the narrative and the performance to give off the idea that these things are going on in the same room or at least in a similar environment.

We also decided that we want smoke around the whole band as they are performing and therefore we drew another set design to show this:

Set & Lighting Designs.

The video will start with the painist/singer in a spotlight and the rest of the band standing in their places in the dark. This is because there is only piano and singing for the first few seconds so the other band members will not be having to play anything. There will also be smoke along with the spot light to give it that mysterious feel.

After the drop, bright lights will come on all of the band to reveal their faces and they will all perform for a while. Throughout the video, the lights will slowly dim so they become of a similar low light to the narrative in which we are having a 'chiaroscuro' lighting.

Chiaroscuro lighting is characterized by a strong contrast between light and dark. We will use it to indicate extreme low-key lighting to create distinct areas of light and darkness in the video. This will give an almost black-and-white feel and we may even use a bit of black and white in there when doing after effects. This is an example of chiaroscuro lighting:

We are going to have an almost empty apartment to show that it is quite a sketchy acitivity what they are doing. We will have the simple objects such as a table on which there will be all the supplies used for the different activities, a sofa and some stairs. However, all these things will be very much in the dark. We will then have a chair in the middle of the room on which he will hang her and tie her to it when he puts clingfilm round her face.

Evaluation of storyboard.

The point of a story board is to enable the director to visulise the flow of camera shots and how they will eventually appear on screen. The first rough draw up of a story board allowed us to see what would work, which shots would look good and how much time to give to the perfomance side and the narrative. Words are broken down into a series of actions and movements that we visulise to be happening at this point of time. Most importantly it showed us how the narrative would come accross on screne to an audience. It also showed us how many shots we had and the variety of each, so we could see if we had to many close ups and mid shots.

Key moments that respresent are concept is when an action falls right on the beat of the music, so when she is pushed off the chair and is hanging it is to the biggest beat in the song, which helps to empahsise it. It also helps us construct the understanding of our performance as it helps us build up the story and make it into an understandable cronological order, we can see what needs to go where, what shot would be most appropiate and how long each should be.

After completing our animatic i felt confident that it made sense and shots were in time to the music, however it felt that some of the shots were to long and needed to be shortened, so the method of the story board is useful in this respect as it told us what was wrong, if we needed to add more shots or if some were to slow or to quick, because of this story board it means we can address these problems before our actual shoot day which will save time when we are actually shooting if we know exactly what is happening when, where and how long for.

I thought our concept was well constructed and their was plently of perfomance time which will connect well with our star image as they are a lot about the music they play, and that they play it, and nothing is fake or mimed.

Overall, i think the animatic process went well and also got us back into the routine and ideas of editing before actually doing our shoot.

Album artwork drafts.

This is the second draft of our album cover for our band. Once this had been printed off and we each had a look at it to see if any changes were needed we had a few changes we want to make before the final draft. We want to make the name of the band 'The Vibe' in a bigger font to show that this is the bands name and thus get people to notice it and remember it. The name of the album is 'Spanning Three Borders' but on this draft, the way the words are arranged it could be read as 'Three Spanning Borders' therefore we are going to re-arrange the way the words are to make the actual name more clear. We used the font 'tape loop' for the titles on the album as this font is bold but at the same time not too clear and has a scratchy look to it.

The image was created by overlapping three different images together by layering them in photoshop. The images were an image of a pentagram, a hadrid collider and Lonardo DiVinci. The reasoning for this was so we were literally 'spanning three borders' with the image as well as the album name.

Shooting Schedule.

9:00 Meet with cast members (performance) in studio
9:10 Start shooting performance. Play song on repeat and get all of the shots of the performance.
Start with Wide Shot of band.
Move onto Close Up of singer.
Mid Shot of singer.
Close Up of hands playing the piano.
Wide Shot of piano player.
Over the Shoulder shot of piano player.
Close Up of paino players face.
Shot of drummer from behind.
Mid Shot of drummer from infront.
Mid Shot of drums from the side.
Close Up of drummers foot.
Mid Shot of guitar.
Close Up of guitar.
Mid Shot of bass.
Close Up of bass.
Tracking shot from piano's feet on pedals slowly up towards his hands on the piano and face.
Shot with singer in focus and rest of the band out of focus in the background.

12:30: LUNCH TIME

2:00: Meet with cast members (narrative) in studio.
2:10: Start shooting narrative.
Shot of guy grabbing nouse from table.
Shot of guy tugging on nouse.
Shot of guy hanging up nouse and tightening it.
Close Up of girl's head in nouse, smiling (creepy smiling)
Close Up of girl's head in nouse once it is 'tightened', she is pulling on it.
Shot from behind of guy tieing girls hands.
Reaction shot of girl whilst she is getting her hands tied, she has a smirk.
Over the shoulder shot of guy stroking girls hair.
Extreme Close Up of guy kissing girls legs on chair.
Mid shot of guy kissing and stroking girls legs whilst she is on chair hanging.
Shot of girl standing on chair, guy is shaking it a bit 'teasing'.
'Handheld' camera shot of guy kicking chair which girl is standing on, she is left to hang.
Close Up of girl fallen over on the floor holding her neck and breathing deeply.
Close Up of guy rolling out clingfilm from box - focus pull.
Shot of guy ripping clingfilm off in foreground with her in the background (out of focus).
Mid Shot of guy tieing girls arms around chair.
Close Up of girl's face with clingfilm wrapped around.
Mid shot of guy kissing girl whilst she has clingfilm on her mouth.
Mid shot from infront of her sitting down, him slowly beginning to rip off the clingfilm from behind.
Close Up of him ripping clingfilm off her mouth.
Shot of him pushing her off chair which falls to the floor along with her.
180degree tracking shot round the girl with guy standing next to her.
Tracking shot of guy wrapping clingfilm around girl's mouth.
Close Up of guy cutting rope.
Shot of girl falling to the floor from the rope.
Shot with camera placed on the floor (handheld) and girl lying on the floor hurt.
Same shot with camera on the floor but with him lying behind her.
Same shot again but with him rolling on top of her, they are looking into each others eyes holding hands.
Close Up of them looking into each others eyes, him on top of her.
Close Up of him holding her face, stroking her hair.
Shot of them rolling about angry with each other ripping each others hair etc, still from the floor.
Mid shot of her sitting ontop of him looking over him.
Tracking shot from floor (position camera has been in up to now) to them, her sitting on top of him, looking into each others eyes.
Close Up of their hands intertwining.
Close Up of his hand on her leg, caressing her thigh.

Costumes.

We want our lead girl to be wearing a big t-shirt and some boxer shorts or just pants. This will give her the look like she does not make an effort on her appearance and just lounges around in whatever for days on end. She will have a pale face, dark eyes, and red lipstick.





We want our lead boy to have the same look that he has just been around the house all day putting on the first thing he finds. Therefore, we want him topless in a pair of dirty jeans.


We want our band to be in skinny jeans, casual shirts and trainers. I also think some members of the band should also wear t-shrits so that they do not look too like each other.