Final Magazine Advert

This is the final version of our magazine advert, after a few draft versions we finally settled for this one. We used the magazine advert research to look at the generic conventions of magazine adverts and tried to follow these conventions. We decided to use an image of our artist as the backdrop to make her a focal point as this is her debut album. We also put an image of the album on the advert to make it easier for our target audience to link the album to the artist. We used star ratings from The Guardian a respectable newspaper to entice our audience to purchase the album.

Final Digipak Designs

This is the front cover of the album.

This is the back of the album. We played around with the shadows and kept the same styled font throughout so that our audience can recognise the artist through the same styled text.

This is the inside panel of the album. We used acknowledgements for this panel, a common convention of albums.

This is the second inside panel. We decided to put an image of the artist and fade it out a little because this is where the CD will sit.

Evaluation Task

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media product?
When planning for our music video, we decided to rule out the songs in the genre of Pop and RnB because we wanted to try something we were not so familiar to. Jamendo is a music website  where unknown artists broadcasts their song. It is a free arts license website providing free downloads, distributing and copying.We used this site to find our chosen song 'Runaways'. After deciding on the indie pop genre and chosen song, we looked at artists in that genre. e.g. Lily Allen, Eliza Dolittle, The ting tings. An occuring thing that came up when watching these music videos were that they all had a narrative and  used studio shots. Colours were also used.
We conformed to the idea of using a narrative which most indie pop artists use. But also the narrative went in line with the lyrics as it helped to explain the lyrics. We also used varaiation of colours through costume and by filming during mid day.
However, we subverted the idea of using studio shots as all filming were done on location.
We chose to use a performing arts student as the actor as she is confident and familiar with being on stage or being recorded. Again, using the performer
Location was very important to us because we wanted to show a variety of shots to cover our backs and some cutaways when needed. Also deciding to include a narrative meant that we had to use a varitey of locations because the lyric "run to the nearest exit" allowed us to be creative and move unto a different location. Also symbolically, the locations we used showed was meant to show freedom.
We decided our target audience would be girls within the age group of 12-19. Taking this to mind, we ued certain things that would attract them such as clothing e.g. bangles, dresses. Also on our blog we used collages of items and prodcuts they would own or like so that the target audience can feel that they are being reflected in the music video.


How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
We looked at several magazine adverts which conformed to our genre


What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Before we went to film we went to the other class and asked them questions on what they things they would expect to see in the genre inde pop. They mentioned that a beach side would be a realli good idea to show a person over coming a relationship. This really helped us because we wasn't even thinking about using that. Again another audience feedback we got was to go back to Trafagular square and reshoot again as we hadn't used an establishing shots to

Audience Feedback: Music Video + Ancillary Tasks

Both A2 Media classes gathered for a showing of everyone's music videos. The feedback that we got for our music video was very good. Everyone understood the narrative and liked the way our narrative fit in with the lyrics of the song. They felt that there were a variety of camera angles which made the video interesting to watch. They also liked our ancillary tasks but felt that one of the panels needed to link in with the other three which had gold and orange hues on them. They felt that this panel was too different from the rest.

They particulary liked our magazine advert and liked the fact that we placed an image of the album on it to allow the audience to recognise the album in stores.

Draft Version: 4 Panel Digipak

After the photoshop workshop, we had really strong ideas for the front and back panels of our digipak, but we were a little stuck when it came to the last two panels. These were some of our original ideas, however after receiving feedback from our peers and teacher we have decided to develop them. 

 

 

This was an idea which we really liked because we are trying to promote our artist so pictures would help to make the artists more recognisable. This would be where the CD would sit.

This was another one of our ideas. Acknowledgements are common in albums and so we also wanted to use this in our digipak.

Lyrics are also common in albums and we wanted to incorporate this in our digipak, however from audience feedback we realised that unless we were going to have a lyric book, it wouldn't really make sense to have the lyrics for just one song on the album. 

We wanted to have some sort of promotional offer in our digipak, that would act as an added incentive to buy the CD and not just download the album. So we came up with the idea of a discounted priced ticket for Elle Lefant's tour. 

Magazine Advert Draft Designs

This is our first draft magazine cover. We used a similar layout to the Hawksley Workman magazine advert from our research in making the image of the artist the background and having the artist name going across the middle. We still need to play around with the colours and sizes and add some more features common to a magazine advert e.g star ratings.

This is similar to the advert above but we thought adding colour to the artist name would make the advert better.
















This is another draft we felt that there was too much text on the advert so we moved things around and changed the text because we felt that the text in previous drafts didn't really suit the artist. We also added an image of the album as we had seen this on other magazine ads and thought it was important to do this because this is her debut album. We cut down the text by adding logos and made the text vertical in an attempt to make the image a focal point.

Editing

We have finally started editing the final version of our music video. We couldn't begin editing properly until we had re-filmed the house scene which is the first scene. If we hadn't have waited, everything we had edited would just have become out of sync when we slotted the new footage in. After doing our rough cut, we have found editing much easier as we are putting shots in the same sequence as they were before and then going over them more finely afterwards. We have found editing to be much quicker that way.

Day 6 of Shooting

Today we went to film the scene outside the house where our artist is singing the chorus. We took a variety of shots so that we have a some clips to cut to if we don't have enough footage. We used two flip cameras as one was running out of battery but it was useful having two as we decided to film the same scene from several angles. We are hoping to film the house scene on Thursday as we didn't have good enough lighting so this time we will be using extra lighting.

Day 5 of shooting

We arrived at Leigh-on-sea at 11:00. We were all enthusiastic about our filming day manly because of the ideas we had to offer and the fact that we wasn't really familiar to this neighbourhood. We planned to shoot a few scenes by the sea, establishing shots of our chosen location, cobbled street and a few additional shots just for any emergencies. When we arrived at our destination, the first thing which caught our eyes was a sort of hill with houses at the top of it. The hill gave an illusion of being up in the sky and also it provided a  really stable establishing shot. We filmed a few shots of this and then we went on our way to find our next destination: A cobbled street. When we found this, we immediately filmed a few long shots of our actress walking on the cobbled street while lip syncing. we had a few disturbences of pedestrians getting into the shot and occasionally parking their car in our frame shot. In the end we filmed a decent footage. Luckily the cobbled street was right next to the sea however when we got to the sea the tide hadn't risen yet so we filmed a few scenes of me running on the sand, picking up the sand, sitting on the sand. We really thought about different angles because we got varied shots of these.

Overall, we filmed everything we planned to do and we even got in some additional shots. The weather was nice and not too cold and this made filming much easier because we were not affected by the cold weather.

Experimenting photoshop- Advert 3

In this lesson, we experimented with photoshop in order to get some practise when doing our digipak and magazine advert. Even though it's not finished and is a working progress i think it taught me how to use lighting, layout, and colour to create an effect image

Weather and Tide time

We have decided to film on this coming saturday. We will be going to Leigh-On-Sea to film our remaining footage. As we will be filming by the sea, it is important to be sure of any weather conditons.

13/12/2010

Time Type Height (metres) 0405 High 3.7 1024 Low 0.8 1649 High 3.5 2231 Low 1.4 Tide information for today and the next six days. Times in GMT. 13/12 14/12 15/12 16/12 17/12 18/12 19/12 In the interest of safety, tidal predictions should be read in conjunction with the tidal graph displayed.

Analysing Advert Research

In the lesson we looked at CD advertisements on different artists. Looking at these adverts helped to highlight the significance of album covers as they all had their own original ideas to suit their audience type.
The following information explains my understanding of CD advertisements:
Manic Street Preacher: This is an image of a half dressed man taking a polaroid photograph in black and white. This image is effective because it clearly stands out of the page and the man is holding a polaroid camera which we don't use much nowadays.  I think that doing this shows that the artists may be into the style of music that existed in the 60's as that was when it became common for everyone to use. It caught my eye straight away because of the size of the image and the fact that the man is half dressed. I think that the advert focuses on the artist image. It would be a good idea to also focus on the artist image because we will be promoting a new artist so having an image of the artist shows any consumers what the artist is like.
Warpaint: This is an image of four women dressed in hippie style clothing, each representing their individuality. This image of the band is bigger than the album cover. This therefore shows that the band are trying to promote their band for consumers to be familiar with them. Taking this to mind we would also use and image of our artist to show establishment.
Weller: Th

Rough Cut Footage - Verse 2

 

Hey guys, we would like get some feedback from you concerning our music video

1) Watching the music video, what do you understand from the narrative?

2) Is the location suitable for the narrative?

3) Does the artist look like another artist in the indie-pop genre?

4) Is there anything else you would like to see in the music video?

5) What do you understand from the narrative in this clip?

Evaluation

 

Weather Forecast

Since we will be filming this week we have taken into account the weather as we do not want any surprises along the way. This week will be dry but a bit cold and so this is ideal. As we do not know what the weather will be like next week, we have decided to film all of our outside footage this week so we can be sure to have to same weather in our footage. 

Shooting Schedules

Upcoming Shoots:
23/11/10
We have confirmed that we will be filming tomorrow at Trafalgar Square. We will all be meeting for 12:00 to get there for 12:30. We would like to film the time lapse scene, transition to Leigh-on-Sea and a shot reflection in the fountain. Hopefully we can get a solid 2 hour shooting without any disturbances.

24/11/10
On Wednesday we will be going to Shadwell Basin by the canal to film storyboard number 21-30. Different angle shots of actor, jumpcut and transition for next location. We will be using our lipsynching techniques here.

We are yet to confirm the dates for when to shoot at Leigh-on-Sea and Sonia's mum bedroom.

Animatics - Part 2

Photoshoot

Our target for Tuesday's lesson was:

• to finish story boarding
• take photos of our characters (as we would like to use these pictures as a prop when shooting the bedroom scene)

In our storyboard, we have a close up shot of a framed picture of the couple on their bedside table. We'd like to use a tranistion to make it seem as though her boyfriend disappears from the picture, just as their relationship seems to have disappeared with their argument. We took quite a few images so we could look through them and choose the best two to take to the print shop.

We choose this location because we wanted a backdrop of yellow and green coloured trees as it brought out the autuamnal weather. However this was not too important as the pictures taken would come out as a medium shot so not many of the background image would be seen.

Here you can see Maria taking an image of our male actor, Tyrone and Sonia. We asked them to act as a loving couple.

Here you can see Maria taking the same image but with Tyrone out of shot. We made sure Sonia stayed in exactly the same position to make it easier when it came to editing.

Below are some other images of the photoshoot.

Posted by Sonia Tedeku, Maria Grillo and Mirza Rahman

Locations, Locations, Locations!

Leigh-on-Sea
From our audience feedback, our audience thought that a suitable location would be a beach. Taking this idea on, we found Leigh-on-Sea to be the best location because it is known to be a quiet seaside, not many people go there and this means that we won't have the problem of people interferring with our shots.
 



Shadwell Basin

Shadwell basin is a location which we will be using for our music video. We chose this location because of the time of the year. Autum is when all the leaves are falling down, bringing an out orange and red colours. This colour will provide a nice back drop for our artist performing.
 

Liverpool Street - Liverpool street is a location we are considering. This is because we want our artist to stand out and look different from everyone else from the setting she is in. Liverpool Street is the best options as it is normally surrounded with businessmen and women.

Sonia's Mum's Bedroom - This bedroom fits the type of room we're looking for for the first verse of our music video.

Artist Profile - Sian Lewis

We discussed what we want our artist to be like. A profile of our artist can be found below:

Name: Sian Lewis
Stage Name: Elle Lefant
Age: 19
Status: Single
Location: She lives in Chiswick in West London with her flatmate and best friend Rachel.
Image: Quiet, humble. She is different with a sort of quirky "Diana Vickers' look.
Possible Costume: Faded denim shirt, leggings and lace up work boots.
History: She first recorded her songs on YouTube before being found by a small record label called Red Bedroom Records. She's always enjoyed singing but has had problems with her confidence ever since she got stage fright at a school talent show.
Fav quote: "I need to dream big because when it happens it's gonna happen real big"
Aspirations: She hopes to follow the likes of Adele and Lily Allen in the future.

'Runaways' marks her first single in the UK market.

Posted by Sonia Tedeku, Mirza Rahman and Maria Grillo